Works
Maecenas also wrote literature himself in both prose and verse. The some twenty fragments that remain show that he was less successful as an author than as a judge and patron of literature.
His prose works on various subjects – Prometheus, dialogues like Symposium (a banquet at which Virgil, Horace and Messalla were present), De cultu suo (on his manner of life) and a poem In Octaviam ("Against Octavia") of which the content is unclear - were ridiculed by Augustus, Seneca and Quintilian for their strange style, the use of rare words and awkward transpositions.
According to Dio Cassius, Maecenas was also the inventor of a system of shorthand.
Read more about this topic: Gaius Maecenas
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“...A shadow now occasionally crossed my simple, sanguine, and life enjoying mind, a notion that I was never really going to accomplish those powerful literary works which would blow a noble trumpet to social generosity and noblesse oblige before the world. What? should I find myself always planning and never achieving ... a richly complicated and yet firmly unified novel?”
—Sarah N. Cleghorn (1876–1959)
“Piety practised in solitude, like the flower that blooms in the desert, may give its fragrance to the winds of heaven, and delight those unbodied spirits that survey the works of God and the actions of men; but it bestows no assistance upon earthly beings, and however free from taints of impurity, yet wants the sacred splendour of beneficence.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
—Bible: New Testament, Matthew 5:15,16.